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The program is designed to provide colleges, universities and research institutes around the world with opportunities to conduct breakthrough collaborative research with HP.

Fang will work with HP Labs on a research initiative focused on improving the quality of enterprise searches through integrated information and collaborative activities.

She said the project “aims to develop effective tools for managing heterogeneous enterprise data and allow users to effectively and efficiently access useful information.”

Fang said such tools are essential to improve the way users search for information, facilitate information exchange and make decisions, and can thus help improve the productivity of an enterprise.

“I am excited about this research collaboration opportunity with HP Labs because it allows faculty and students to work closely with world-class researchers and engineers from a company that has a long history of contributing leading edge computer technology to the world,” Fang said. “The enterprise search problem we are tackling together is particularly important as it presents an interesting research challenge and opportunity to develop solutions that could have enormous benefits for the industry and society.”

HP reviewed more than 375 proposals from 202 universities across 36 countries. UD is one of only 52 universities in the world to receive a 2010 Innovation Research award.

The HP Labs Innovation Research Program is designed to encourage open collaboration between HP and the academic community on mutually beneficial, high-impact research.

"Our goal with the HP Labs Innovation Research Program is to inspire the brightest minds from around the world to conduct high-impact scientific research, addressing the most important challenges and opportunities facing society in the next decade," said Prith Banerjee, senior vice president of research at HP and director of HP Labs. "The University of Delaware has demonstrated outstanding achievement and we look forward to collaborating with it in this dynamic area of research.”

Fang received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Tsinghua University in China and her master's degree and doctorate in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She joined the UD faculty in 2008.

Her research focuses on real world applications that effectively and efficiently manage large amounts of text information, and her primary research interest in information retrieval.